Slipstream (62 page)

By now, my walking was not good, as I’d been diagnosed with intermittent claudication, which meant that after a few yards’ walking I felt as though I was getting cramp. This had been
coming on for some time, and was very tiresome. I’d lived in Bungay for some time. I couldn’t take Darcy for proper walks, I could no longer strim – I’d been battling with
ten-foot-high nettles on the right-hand side of my meadow for years, and as I don’t use pesticide of any description, strimming was the only method. I was
losing the
battle in the meadow – had planted thousands of bulbs for naturalizing, but the grass got out of hand and the anemones, for instance, could hardly be seen. One day Mr Cundy, the farmer across
the river who supplies Bungay with particularly good milk, was in the meadow which he’d just cut for hay and introduced me to a man he thought might be prepared to give me a hand.

That was the beginning of my happy partnership with David Evans. He had all the machinery ready for use; he understood land management, was a good naturalist and understood exactly how I wanted
the place to be. He has revolutionized the meadow, its spinney and the long right-hand side, which is now free of nettles and is well planted with trees, shrubs, bulbs and ferns. We have twice
opened the garden for charity, and this could never have happened without David. Eventually we were able to buy the rest of the island, of which previously I’d owned a third, and the piece of
land beyond my meadow that marches with the river which now belongs to David. A pond on the island has been dug, and we’ve stocked it with fish. David has made a path that runs right round
the island which in spring is covered with thick peridot-coloured moss. It’s an enchanting place.

Casting Off
came out in 1995. Macmillan gave me a wonderful party at the Ivy to which many of my friends came. Afterwards about fourteen of us went out to dinner. By
now, there was more enthusiasm for the tetralogy, and some writers whom I particularly admired wrote to me and said very encouraging things. Selina, Sybille, and Roy Foster, the Irish historian,
and Aisling, his wife, had always supported me with flattering interest. Jane Wood had patiently seen me through all my glooms and hiccups in just the right editorial way. I did feel very strange
when I wrote the last words: it was the end of living with so many people who, for six years, had monopolized my life.

The books were selling very well: something that hadn’t happened to me before. Workhouse fever receded, I actually felt rich, a most enjoyable sensation. I noticed with wry interest that
as long as I published a few thousand copies of a novel and received reasonable notices I could be considered, by some, good. Now that I’d published four books that were nearer the bestseller
mark, those same people tended to write me off as ‘just a bestseller’. This, although many novels have been published for at least a hundred and fifty years that were both bestselling
and
good. Anyway, that didn’t spoil my enjoyment. I could, for instance, buy any tree I wanted, dozens of them, without thinking of the cost. I could buy better wine, do things to my
house, take taxis, give people nicer presents; there was no end to it. I’ve never understood people who say it must be awful to be rich – I wasn’t exactly
rich
, except in
comparison to the previous ten years of my life. I could easily have enjoyed being richer.

But there are other, unexpected and sometimes very moving, bonuses from being more widely read. One woman came up to me when I was signing books and said she’d recently lost her husband
and that the only thing that had kept her from going mad during the weeks of insomnia after his death had been reading the Cazalets, because she could lose herself in them. When I was half-way
through
Confusion
, a woman wrote to me saying how much she’d enjoyed the books, but she was dying of cancer and was afraid that she wouldn’t be alive for the next volume: could I
please
tell her what was going to happen? Right until the end? This was difficult because although I know where I’m going, I like the details of my journey to be a surprise for me as
well as the reader. But I had to tell her something so I wrote out a plot. Then, because she’d said nothing of her circumstances, I asked her if she had family or friends looking after her.
She wrote back thanking me and said she was surrounded by love. So that was as all right as it could be.

Then I had a letter from a lady who lived in Hastings. She said she’d read the four books, and that it had taken her back to the war: she’d been one of the student nurses in my
aunt’s Babies’ Hotel, which was evacuated to us in Sussex. Myra Hess – my aunt’s great friend – had got her and a friend out of Germany, and thereby saved their lives.
Her friend lived somewhere in England, but after reading the books, they’d revisited the houses where the babies had been, and where my grandmother had lived. She said my grandmother had
realized how homesick she and her friend were, and used to arrange wonderful evenings when she played them music on her gramophone and they had tea and biscuits. She remembered me as a very young
girl going to help with the babies. She sent two photographs; one of herself as a ravishing young girl in her nurse’s uniform, and one of her and her friend, cardiganed old dears on their
nostalgic visit.

In the summer of 1996 I went on a second trip with the
Wyndhams to France. Walking was no better and I felt tired all the time. I also thought I had piles – that
laughable complaint, like mothers-in-law and other music-hall jokes, but deeply unfunny for the victim. When I got back to England I saw my doctor and told him about the walking and my piles. He
said I’d probably need an operation to replace a bit of blocked artery in my leg, but the wait for this was up to three years. I was seventy-three: it seemed too long to wait. I asked if I
could have it done privately. Certainly I could. It was also arranged that when I got notice of the appointment, I should see someone at the hospital near Lowestoft to assess the piles situation. I
went to a BUPA hospital and saw the surgeon, and also had to ask about cost. He could replace the artery in a month and I’d be skipping about in no time. It would cost seven thousand pounds.
I asked my new financial assistant and friend, Jean McIntyre, whether I could afford this and she said yes, it was a priority.

In November, my appointment came through for the James Paget hospital to sort out the piles. For some reason I decided to go in a cab: Jenner and Terry were staying with me, and there seemed no
point in them wasting their precious rest time on driving me there, then waiting and driving me back. I set off, feeling perfectly calm about the whole thing. When I got there, I was told that the
consultant I was supposed to see had flu, but there was another doctor. He examined me and then said, ‘Keep still, I’m just going to do something that may hurt a bit.’ There
followed seconds of unspeakable pain. A kind nurse held my hand through it. Afterwards the doctor said, ‘I’ve just taken tissue for a biopsy. We usually have people in overnight and
give them an anaesthetic, but I thought I’d do it at once.’

Instantly I knew that something was very wrong. ‘When will you have the results?’

‘In about ten days’ time. We’ll inform your doctor, of course.’

I walked out into the dark where the cab was waiting. It must be cancer. And he must know it is, or he wouldn’t have cut me so immediately. The cab driver was very talkative, and I tried
to listen
to him to stop the feeling of panic. But when I got back to Jenner and Terry I could tell them, could get rid of some of the shock. They had to go back to London the
next day, and I had to wait the ten days on my own. I’d rung my doctor to tell him and found that he already knew. He was very kind, but it all felt rather ominous – a colostomy was
likely. I didn’t even know what that was, but of course it was easy to find out. The prospect filled me with horror. As I waited I thought it probable that I was dying. Nearly everyone
I’d known who’d had cancer had died of it in the end. It was extraordinary how all my values shifted – as though I’d shaken a kaleidoscope and all the little segments,
though still there, had made a new, unrecognizable pattern. Unhappy, lonely or a failure I might have been, but even those ingredients of my life now seemed precious – even desirable. I
didn’t want to die. But perhaps it would all be all right; maybe I’d turn out not to have cancer. I oscillated between these emotions, but optimism lost the battle. I decided I was more
likely to die than not. I thought of Victor Stiebel and the increasingly humiliating stages of his decline. I thought of Jessie in her bed for life, unable to look after herself, dependent upon
others for the most intimate services. I thought of Sargy, to whom the worst had happened, and how he never, never whinged. I thought of his dignity and determination to pursue his life and work.
And I remembered my father trying to blow me a kiss before he died. One thing became very clear: I couldn’t prevent myself dying, but I could have some power about how I did it. I knew that
this was a resolution made in ignorance: like most people I am afraid of pain and I’d no way of knowing how much of that I could stand. I had no belief in an afterlife, which might, I
suppose, have made the whole thing exciting – the last great adventure. But a lot of the time I just prayed that the whole thing was a false alarm. On the ninth morning, I had to go into town
to buy food, and suddenly – walking down the street to my house – I lightened completely as though, without warning, I’d emerged from a heavy fog into clear sunlight. I felt
extraordinarily, irrationally happy. Whatever happened, it would be all right.

In the late afternoon, my doctor rang to say that the biopsy was positive, I had cancer, and treatment – radiotherapy – would have to begin in January. Did this
mean no colostomy? Yes, for the time being anyway. That was one small relief. I had to cancel my leg operation. In the meantime, I was to have various blood tests.

Nicola offered at once to come and drive me in for the treatment, which was to take place five days a week for three weeks. She couldn’t stay all the time, so my kind cousin Kay Howard
offered to do the other half. It took place in the old Norwich hospital. It was hell to find a parking space, and the time in the hospital was much lengthened because the radiation machine
constantly broke down. There was only one man who could fix it and he was often fixing something else. Hours would pass sitting on the artificial leather seats with rows of cancer patients, the air
full of apprehension, boredom and doom. We read old – medieval – magazines until we had the sense to bring books. Nic was marvellous to me – cheerful, kind and practical. You
don’t feel much for the first two weeks, but after that it begins to hit you: lassitude, tiredness, positive exhaustion and discomfort. When I’d recovered from this, I was able to go
ahead with the vascular operation to replace the artery in my leg at the BUPA hospital. This seemed to go well. I spent two weeks in the hospital to convalesce.

During this period of health anxieties, something quite different had been happening. In the early autumn I’d broadcast my second
Desert Island Discs
– this time with Sue
Lawley. It went rather well, and I got dozens of letters, all forwarded by the BBC in packets. They were mostly friendly, saying how much they liked one piece of music but why hadn’t I chosen
another? There were a few obscene letters, one or two that were quite simply mad and others merely eccentric. Over the years I’d got quite good at sorting these out for replies or
silence.

Among them was a brief note from a man who said he’d enjoyed the programme, and how much he would like to take me out to tea one day. I didn’t receive this for some days, and when
the second
batch of letters arrived, about a week later, there was another note from the same man. He wondered if I’d had his first, and added that if I didn’t like
the idea of tea with him he would quite understand, and bother me no more. I answered, saying I’d been ill, was due for an operation and therefore couldn’t do anything about tea until
March. I got a letter back full of enthusiasm. At one point I wrote saying why didn’t he tell me a bit about himself. He responded to this at length. Then I got one saying that he loved me. I
wrote back to say that that was nonsense: he didn’t know me at all. His letters about himself were rather full of misfortune. He seemed to have had a sad life. He wrote long letters about
three times a week. I told him I couldn’t keep up with him since I’d started to plan and write a new novel. He entirely understood that. By now I knew that he’d parted from his
wife and was living on his own.

But a crucial point of this relationship had in fact occurred much earlier, after we’d exchanged no more than two or three letters. It was during my nine-day wait for the verdict on my
biopsy. I was standing by my bedroom window looking at the place under the beech tree where soon the snowdrops would appear, and wondering whether this was the last year I should see them, when the
telephone rang. It was him. He announced himself and said, ‘I don’t know what to
say
to you!’ I didn’t know what to say to him either. I fell back on my usual thing
of asking him to tell me more about himself. No, no, he wanted to hear about
me
, he only knew what he had heard on the radio and from reading books. I can’t now remember whether it was
then I told him I had cancer, or whether it was later, in a letter. Anyway, there wasn’t much more conversation on the telephone.

I won’t write here a full account of what followed since I made a novel out of it, and being a novel it had the licence to blend fact with invention as I pleased.

In real life, the letters became more frequent – he had a talent for that and I have always been a sucker for prolonged correspondence. It was also exciting to have what, at the least, was
a flirtation.
Jonathan Cavendish had once said to me, ‘You never flirt, do you?’ I hadn’t thought of that, but when he said it I recognized rather sadly that
it was true.